Custom settings for the team balancer

[=MERCS=JenkemJunkie]

Currently the team balancer will only allow people to join a team that has an equal or lower player count, so if the sides are balanced 36/35 no one can join the side with 36 people. Could we gain the ability to allow people to join the higher side to a limit set by the server owner? E.g. if the limit is set to +5 and the teams are populated 40/35 then no one could join the side with 40 until someone joined the other team to make it 40/36. Currently sometimes online the sides get stacked to a degree that makes it boring for both sides (unless you're a sadist or masochist), and having a team balancer that isn't as strict could prevent this from happening which would greatly improve the online experience.

[Alonzo]

Just to add to this and make things clear.

 

It looks like there is a bug in the coalition balancer for multiplayer servers. If you enable the balancer, it is 'strict' -- it only lets players join the side with fewer players. What we would like is a 'loose' balancer that allows one side to have a few more players than the other.

 

It looks like the balancer is intended to have flexible behavior. Here's the config file CBalancer.cfg

 

[Planes]
MinActivePlayers = 2
PowerDiff = 2.0
PowerRatio = 1.25


script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/LaGG3s29.txt", 0.6
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Yak1s69.txt", 0.8
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Yak1s127.txt", 0.8
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/La5s8.txt", 0.9
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Il2m42.txt", 1.2
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Pe2s87.txt", 1.4
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf109F4.txt", 1.0
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf109G2.txt", 0.9
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf109G4.txt", 0.9
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Fw190A3.txt", 0.9
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Ju87D3.txt", 1.0
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/He111H6.txt", 1.6

script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/I16t24.txt", 0.5
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/MiG3s24.txt", 0.7
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/P40E1.txt", 0.7
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Il2m41.txt", 1.2
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Pe2s35.txt", 1.4
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf109E7.txt", 0.7
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf109F2.txt", 0.8
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/MC202s8.txt", 0.7
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Bf110E2.txt", 1.1
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Ju88A4.txt", 1.5
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/planes/Ju523mg4e.txt", 1.0
[end]

[Tanks]
MinActivePlayers = 2
PowerDiff = 2.0
PowerRatio = 1.25


script = "luascripts/worldobjects/vehicles/_T34-76STZ.txt", 1.0
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/vehicles/_PzIII-L.txt", 0.5
script = "luascripts/worldobjects/vehicles/_BA64.txt", 0.05
[end]


// lock coalitions, that matches
// for ( char c = (C_NEUTRAL+1); c <= C_LAST_COALITION; ++c )
//  if ( activePlayers[ c ] > m_iMinActivePlayers )
//   if ( (cPower[c] - MinCoalitionPower > m_fPowerDiff) || ( cPower[c] / (MinCoalitionPower+1.0f) > m_fPowerRatio ) )
//    lockedCoalitions[c] = true;
// MinActivePlayers - minimal amount of aircraft and tank players in a coalition for spawn lock to occur
// PowerDiff - absolute difference between my coalition and minimal power coalition for spawn lock for my coalition to occur
// PowerRatio - ratio between two coalition powers for spawn lock for my coalition to occur
// Power of a coalition is a sum of all aircraft and tanks coefficients active at any given moment

 

The problem is that, maybe due to a bug, if you enable the coalition balancer it doesn't seem to work properly. It also appears, given the plane set listed in CBalancer.cfg, that it hasn't been updated in a while. Maybe it's just kind of old and there's a bug?

 

A simple balancer that restricts one side to outnumbering the other by at most N planes would be fine. Then we could say "don't let one side outnumber the other by more than 10 planes". That would probably be totally fine for us.

 

Any help appreciated.

[Alonzo]

We re-tested this yesterday and confirmed the bug. If we set coalitionsBalancer = true in our .SDS file for dserver, the coalition balancer turns on and disables spawn points for the team with more players. So the bug is still there -- the coalition balancer is 'strict' and we can't seem to get it to listen to our config in CBalancer.cfg and become a 'loose' balancer.

 

[Haluter]

Would be nice if the devs even acknowledged this bug ?‍♂️